There are LOTS of restrictions on parody but... in order to be used in a parodic manner, the borrowed material must be implemented in such a way that a reasonable person could not confuse it as coming from the original artist/creator. Sometimes this includes a disclaimer (e.g., South Park's intro) or a sufficient altering of the words of a song (e.g. Weird Al). This ad does neither - GradeAUnderA could absolutely make the case against fair use: the ad fails to make it clear to the layman that it is NOT the original production of GAUA.

It's more damning that the Reactor advert included a screen grab and fake links from the GAUA outtro -- someone thinking that they're subscribing to GAUA by clicking the final link would instead be directed to Reactor. This is blatant click-stealing, and violates TOU.

IANAL, but common sense...

Edit: some folks are saying that this video may actually be satirical and somehow affiliated with GradeA. Other folks are saying that Grade is probably furious and didn't have anything to do with it. The fact that we can't tell whether or not that's the case just by watching the video is pretty clear evidence that this wouldn't pass muster in a fair use challenge.

Also not a lawyer, but doesn't the fact that it's an advertisement factor into it as well? I know the laws about using someone's image/voice/likeness/etc for artistic works are less strict than using them for commercial purposes, because someone appearing in an advertisement implies that they personally endorse that product/service. I'm not sure how it factors into fair use, but I'd assume that splicing together voice clips of someone to make it sound like they're endorsing your product in an advertisement without getting their consent has gotta be just begging for a lawsuit.

Can anyone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about tell me if I'm making sense at all?

Profit is a very important factor in fair use considerations. More specifically, depriving the copyright owner of market opportunities or income is the most damning factor in most legal cases. Fair use is a multifaceted law with a lot of gray area. This is a good intro: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

"Another important fair use factor is whether your use deprives the copyright owner of income or undermines a new or potential market for the copyrighted work. Depriving a copyright owner of income is very likely to trigger a lawsuit."

It's not just that, it's a publicity issue at that point. Basically the ad has made it appear that GAUA has endorsed a product that he hasn't. You are allowed to proactively prevent anyone from using your name or likeness (including voice) as an endorsement to a commercial product.

That advertisement was clearly done for profit, thus it's not fair use to use others work unless you have their explicit permission to do so, I highly doubt that they had permission, making it an infringement of someone elses protected work.

Fair use can be used for several reasons, two legitimate uses that come to mind being parody or criticism.

Weird Al Yankovic uses parody to produce much of his work, he does not need the legal permission of the original rights owners to produce his work.

Because he is so good at parody, he often times does have the permission and even the assistance and collaboration in the creation of the parody of the original artist or their work being parodied.

Movie or book reviewers will often times show small snippets of a movie or several paragraphs or a page or two worth of text from a 500 page book to assert their point. That's fair use.

Showing 20 minutes of a 90 minute movie or quoting whole chapters would not be fair use.

Here is an outstanding example of using copyrighted material for criticism which is fair use:

The problem comes when they factor in that this guy paid youtube and Grade to show the ad. That means Grade received money for this. Again more automated internet bullshit, Grade didn't even have a choice.

What kills me is Youtube and Facebook has been terrible to Youtubers making original content for a long time, but it took outrage over silly channels to be brought to the forefront here on Reddit.

And I'll add that most Redditors genuinely don't give a flying fuck. A lot of reuploaded Youtube videos are posted to Reddit, and when I've brought it up, most of the Reddit community has been dicks about it.

It's in GradeA's best interest to not make a response video to it. This guy has shit for views, and even more shit for subs. He's doing it to spark controversy and drama. If GradeA makes a response video it will blow this douchebag's channel up, which is exactly what he wants.

He should just quietly take legal action. This guy blatantly used GradeA's work which clearly does not fall under fair-use, and is actually used in an extremely scummy and deceitful way.

I'd even go as far as to say you should delete the link to this douche's video. You're driving traffic to his channel by having it up. You got 540 upvotes right now, so we can say you've given this guy at least that many views. Though we all know it is most likely even 10 times that because most people don't upvote or downvote, they just read/watch/consume and move along.

I must've listened to the album at least 50 times now. If you haven't seen it, check out The Wall: Live at the Berlin Wall in 1990. One of the best performances of the album, probably one of Waters's best, as well. A lot of famous people performed The Trial: Thomas Dolby, Ute Lemper, TIM FUCKING CURRY.

I'm not worried about automated internet bullshit as much as I am for the "Automated Justice" the path is being laid for.

Their automated appeal systems deliver "justice" without a man pushing even the slightest of buttons, let alone think. What's even worst is that people reading said appeals are the accusants themselves while the poor man caught in the middle has almost no right to speak.

Yeah, I have absolutely nothing to do with that video. I didn't make it, the guy called "Reactor" spliced together clips from my videos and made that. He's on his channel saying "My friend GradeAUnderA" etc.

I've messaged my manager at my MCN to see if there's anything I can do about getting that shit taken down. Guy's a loser.﻿

Well the 0-9 keys skip to a fraction of the time in the video. So 5 goes to midpoint and 9 goes to the end so it makes sense that 0 would go to the beginning. /u/NamorDotMe makes a good point too, my laptop doesn't have a dedicated home key. It's accessed by holding control + left arrow...

If you have a standard 104 key keyboard, the DELETE, INSERT, HOME, END, PAGE DOWN and PAGE UP keys are above your 4 arrow keys between the letter keys and numeric pad. If you don't have a standard keyboard, those keys are probably place under modifier combination where you need to remove numlock to use them, or use some other modifier (CTRL, ALT or SHIFT) to get to those keys.

The 'k' key will start/pause the video regardless of what's selected on the page. Spacebar only works if you have clicked on the video (e.g. if you load a video and press space, the page scrolls down instead of affecting the video. 'K' key will work regardless).

"A lot of people are downvoting that video, because they think I was serious..."

"But uh..."

"..."

"Anyway!"

This is fucking genius. And like any truly clever satire, especially of the kind that is basically satirizing itself, it will unfortunately fly way over most people's heads. Let the hate flow plebs, your salt is sweet upon the tongues of trolls.﻿

I've never seen a "react to" video but if that Jinx one is what they're all about I seriously don't know wtf people think is funny about them... It's literally a guy pretending to laugh at something and then saying stupid shit afterwords.

That's Youtubes "react" videos. Though in fact they're using popular videos to get the clicks. People visit it more to watch the content, than to see the reactions. This is btw copyright infringement what they do and illegal, though Youtube apparently doesn't care. so in fact, they're stealing content and maskerading it as "react" video to look legit to people who have no clue.

There are a few "real" react videos on youtube. Like the one that Ellen Degeneres made (can't find it) where she shows kids oldschool things and ask them what they're, etc. Something where you really see the reactions.

The only dislikes are from people who don't understand what he's doing. This is some Andy Kaufman-level straight-faced comedy. The subtleties are incredible. I love how he starts recording, sits there for a moment, then hops into his douchey persona: "Yo what up guys!"

It is genius though. He's taken the entire reaction controversy and embodied it into one character. He's also kept up with it by creating quite a lot of content in a short amount of time, reinforcing the point that these channels are creatively bankrupt and easy to generate content for.

He cannot lose. He can either:

Get a following of 12 year olds who don't understand its satire and think its another generic reaction channel, proving that creatively bankrupt channels will always earn a following

Get a following of smart people who understand the satire, helping to spread the message about the issue with reaction channels

Get shut down before he gets big, proving that YouTube and the powers that be will only shut down an infringing channel before it becomes a cash cow to them

Get shut down after he finds a following and becomes popular, creating discussion about why he got shut down but other reaction channels with followers are still operating

Everything is Broken it seems. Whenever OzzyMan uploads a video within 6 hours it has over million views on Facebook, some videos are over 15M views while his original video is 350k on Youtube. Same goes for other channels.

I forgot the details, but I think youtube only counts it as a view if someone watched a vid for a considerable amount of time, while facebook counts short glimpses at what's popped up on your wall and autoplayed while you scrolled down

Laughing my ass off at that video! That thinly veiled attempt at getting GradeAunderA's real name and home address is too funny. And then being sad that nobody is sending him mail. Great parody of other shitty channels.

Yeah, I have absolutely nothing to do with that video. I didn't make it, the guy called "Reactor" spliced together clips from my videos and made that. He's on his channel saying "My friend GradeAUnderA" etc. I've messaged my manager at my MCN to see if there's anything I can do about getting that shit taken down. Guy's a loser.﻿

The second hat give away is funnier. And it's so funny how he mocks cringey awkward youtubers who stumble over their words and ramble because they didn't write down or rehearse what they were going to say.

It isn't fair use. It stops being fair use when he reworks the video so extensively that it no longer accurately represents the original while making no disclaimer or not making it obvious to a viewer in any way that it is a satirical rework of the guy's stuff.

Just because the guy does satire doesn't mean this shit is okay. Just because they're doing it for a video doesn't mean it's cool for a guy to go slapping people as some fucked up version of a 'prank'.

If he's doing it as a means by which to point out a flaw in YouTube, he's doing it wrong because it really is just theft. I think it's obvious at this point that he's spending a considerable amount of time and effort trolling GAUA for 'teh lulz'. This is just an escalation of that.

While a lot of this 'Reactor's' videos are pretty clever, there comes a point where you stop being 'pretty clever' and just turn into an asshole.

In this video he straight up calls out gradeAUnderA on being a hypocrite by referencing the fact that he recommends calling out other youtubers to cause controversy (which he has done on multiple occasions e.g Vegan Gains, Nicole Arbour) then when someone uses the same tactic on him begging for the sympathy vote.

exactly... and moreover the whole point of the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfzk0SN1Pac) is to make a controversy, just as GradeA has SAID to do. then OP tries to bring attention to this guy's "douchy-ness", but ironically does exactly what this reactor guys want. reddit fell right into his trap and now he's gonna get that initial growth that he talked about being so hard to get. should i just link my shitty youtube channel here now?

I just think that it's interesting that so many people are willing to become nitpicking lawyers for a channel they like while in the same week they would criticize a channel they didn't like for being nitpicking lawyers.

I'm seizing the opportunity to ask - what is something that youtube can actually do to put an end to all these recent problems? Everyone is talking about how there needs to be humans and not robots going through the claims and sorting out the legit ones from the false ones. Is it possible for youtube to do that, with the constant flow of new videos being uploaded? At this point what is a viable system that youtube can incorporate for all this bullshit to end? I'm not defending them, just curious.

edit: I just looked up the numbers, around 300 hours worth of videos are being uploaded every minute. It is possible for humans to go through them all? Or is this number even relevant? Maybe it depends on the number of claims being issued.

Step one is getting a human involved. Robots are good for the bulk majority of issues, but for cases of clear abuse there needs to be a human involved in the mediation.

Step two is getting actual penalties and punishments for clear, intentional abuse. Alas, step two is going to be the hard part because of the multi-billion dollar Hollywood lobby who will throw billions of dollars at any attempt to hold them accountable for anything. That, unfortunately, also happens to help the lesser known Youtube vermin.

They should get humans involved, the most feasible solution would be to allow Youtubers to vote whether something is a violation of copyright/trademark.

Youtubers flag/report infringing work.

After a certain threshold, the work is reviewed by someone at Youtube.

If the work is determined infringing, the work is removed, and anyone who flagged it gets some kind of honor credit.

Any work flagged that does not infringe, but is reviewed by Youtube because Youtubers flagged, those Youtubers will lose honor credit. After awhile their flags are simply ignored for being off-base, etc.

You'll end up with some exceptional users who can spot infringing work incredibly well. Their flags will be worth a lot more, since they're almost always right after Youtube reviews it. And could possibly result in an automatic removal or automatic review.

Not exactly sure how such a system would work with ads though. Or the exact details for the above, but user involvement is key. And the automated system can't be completely replaced, since there's just so much infringing work.

It needs to be a combination of robots and humans behind them. Humans aren't fast enough, and robot's aren't accurate enough.

Robots find the obvious stuff, Humans process the important shit like DMCA requests. People and organizations found repeatedly filing false claims have their channel banned and lose access to the DMCA functionality.

Hire more employees. There have been so many problems with YouTube that could have been resolved if they had more employees.

I can't take this seriously as an option. We already have an idea what such a system manual system is like - its called Facebook with its every so frustrating "freebooting" problem. Humans simply cannot react fast enough to the stream of videos being uploaded and if it takes 3-4 days for someone to respond to your claim, then all the majority of views would have already been made.

Its also fucking rediculous, because employees are the #1 cost to any tech business and YouTube just broke even last year. Google would likely not sink any more money into this - and given the amount of people you would need to hire to review 300 hours of video, it would not be cheap.

They don't publish advertising statistics, but Youtube receives hundreds of hours of new content every minute and has over a billion users, who consume over a hundred million hours of content every day.

Obviously you are going to want to automate a service like that to the highest degree you possibly can. Even if it means there's no human approval of everything, the channel and advertising administrators are going to have a better experience when things happen quickly and human interaction is only required when there's an issue.

In the comments GradeUnderA is saying he contacted his manager to see what they can do. As long as the clearly misleading advertisement is taken down and the channel behind it is dealt with, I don't see a reason why hiring thousands of people to replace automated parts of the system would be better or necessary.

YouTubers have been having a sombering realization that YouTube is sucking, and it's honestly kinda funny to see the crappy side of YouTube that manages to get popular struggle in death throws to stay relevant as everyone just starts hating their guts.

So a reaction channel used clips from his video; including his reaction channel video in which he voices his distaste for them; to advertise himself in a ad which seems to have been created in windows movie maker and audacity? I cant even began to understand this man's thought process; such things must be beyond mortal minds...

Didnt Ethan recently make a video using soflo content twisted to saying that "I'm an idiot and everyone who follows h3h3 is cool." And so on.... it's kinda unfair cause reactor is doing the same thing.

Probably going to get downvoted to hell, but apparently the guy that made the ad is some Einstein level of genius, according to people here. Is it me or is it just not that clever? Yeah sure he's making it look like he's serious about it all and that he's just taking the piss out of reaction channels, but its not crazy clever. And sheesh, this is just my opinion but "clever" doesn't mean hilarious either.

It seems to work out for him since he got another frontpage post and I'm linking his video but as long as you use adblock and don't subscribe to him it doesn't matter. He's also only playing a character and apparently it seems to work since he got 1k subs already.

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